


they are all gone into the world of light

by merrymegtargaryen



Category: Picnic at Hanging Rock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 09:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17846636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/pseuds/merrymegtargaryen
Summary: Ten years later, Irma is ready to fulfill her vow.





	they are all gone into the world of light

It is as if no time at all has passed. 

She climbs the rock with a determined sort of energy. She can hear her ragged breath, can feel sweat trickling down her back, but still she walks on. She must get to the top. She  _ must _ . 

Around her, she can hear the soft chatter of voices. They aren’t here and now, she knows. They’re from another time, preserved on the wind. 

_ Miranda. Marion. Edith. _

Mr. Whitehead said that there are places where time doesn’t exist. Or rather, where it does, but all at once. It doesn’t pass as normal time does. Past, present, and future are all one. 

She’d scoffed at that, of course, as she had scoffed at most things Mr. Whitehead said. She was too worldly for such beliefs.

And now…

She can feel them, all around her. She can hear their voices, can see a slip of white out of the corner of her eye. When she stops to wipe her brow, she feels someone’s breath fan across her neck, cooling the sweat that’s beaded there. 

She’d been on Hanging Rock for nine days before anyone found her. Nine days of men searching high and low, banging pots and pans and calling for her. But it  _ hadn’t _ been nine days, hardly any time had passed at all. 

_ Time _ .

She stops to take off her shoes and stockings, letting her bare feet touch the warm stone beneath her. It feels good. It feels  _ right _ . How many hundreds of thousands had trod this ground before her? Mr. Whitehead said that Aborigine boys used to come here to become men. How many had climbed this mountain as boys and descended as men?

_ I was a girl when I went up this mountain, and I came down a woman. But Miranda and Marion...they never came down. They never had to be women. _

_ They got to be free. _

“They are all gone into the world of light,” she mumbles, pushing herself up, up, up the Rock. She’s thought of this poem often since she came down the Rock. “And I alone sit ling’ring here; their very memory is fair and bright, and my sad thoughts doth clear. It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, like stars upon some gloomy grove, or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, after the sun’s remove. I see them walking in an air of glory, whose light doth trample on my days.”

Not long now. Not long at all.

She stops near the top, breathing hard as she leans against the rockface. She closes her eyes, resting her head against the ancient red stone and letting the breeze cool her. 

She’s thought about Valentine’s Day 1900 every single day for the last ten years. She remembers the climb, that fateful moment when Miranda and Marion and Mrs. McCraw disappeared through that hole and the boulder had slipped in her way before she could follow. She remembers, with varying shades of clarity, the way she’d beat her hands against the boulder and screamed, how she’d pleaded with the Rock to let her through. She’d beaten and shouted and sobbed until she’d been overcome with exhaustion. Everything is black after that. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the Fitzhubert home. 

There are times when she feels that, even though she hadn’t gotten the chance to follow the others into that hole, some part of her had gone anyway. She’s always felt a little bit  _ less _ since that day, a fragment of her former self. Outwardly, she was the same girl, the perfect little heiress she’d been raised to be. She attended balls and soirees, wined and dined with the highest society, dressed as though everyone had their eyes on her--and they always did. But inwardly, she was different and she knew it. She wasn’t the same Irma she had once been. Sometimes she’d look around her life and feel frightened, as if someone new had entered her body. She wore Irma’s clothes and slept in Irma’s bed and kissed Irma’s husband dutifully on the cheek, but  _ where was Irma? _

_ Hanging Rock _ , the answer would come to her.  _ You left her on Hanging Rock _ .

A distant sound draws her out of her rest. She opens her eyes, peering down below at ant-like figures on the ground. 

_ “Irma! Miss Leopold!” _

She closes her eyes again, taking a deep breath. She won’t let them find her. Not this time. Not ever.

She pushes herself off the rockwall and climbs the remainder of the mountain, her heart pounding as she nears the top.

“Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill my perspective still as they pass, or else remove me hence unto that hill, where I shall need no glass.”

She reaches the top of the Rock, her lungs straining and heart pounding. She unhooks her dress, pulling it over her head and tossing it on the ground. She scrambles to undo the laces of her corset, her chest heaving as she tries to take in air. She’s so lightheaded all of a sudden, but she cannot afford to fall asleep. Not now. Not when she’s so very close.

She practically sobs with frustration, twisting and turning to free herself. She never dresses or undresses without the help of a maid. She feels childish and helpless, unable to remove a single artifact of clothing.

The laces come loose all at once. She pulls it over her head, filling her lungs with air. She starts to drop the corset to the ground, too, but something stays her hand. 

They’d thrown their corsets over the side of the Rock on that day. They’d floated, suspended in air as if they had minds of their own. 

Irma looks at her corset...and then throws it with all her might, watching it flutter on the breeze. 

And then something very strange happens.

The sky turns red, the corset disappears, and in its place is the hole. 

Irma feels light as a feather. She feels happy. She feels free.

Miranda smiles at her, holding out her hand.

Irma takes it…

And steps through the hole.

  
  



End file.
